Embodiments of the present inventive concepts relate to an image frame motion estimation device and an image frame motion estimation method using the same. More particularly, the embodiments of the present inventive concepts relate to a device and method for estimating a motion of an object of an image frame.
In the communication field in which bandwidth is limited, image signal compression is important in realizing a multimedia application. An object of the image signal compression is to remove a redundant image signal and to extract only core information used to reproduce an image. In particular, in video signal compression, an important premise for removing a redundant video signal is that there is little difference between two adjacent frames in a video sequence.
Accordingly, in a codec such as MPEG-4 or H.264/MPEG-4 advanced video coding (AVC), in order to predict a motion vector of a current block, various methods using information of current blocks and previous blocks have been used.
Hierarchical motion estimation has an advantage that a motion of an object of an image frame can be rapidly ascertained at a low computational complexity. Another advantage of hierarchical motion estimation is that a memory with a small capacity is required. However, the hierarchical motion estimation has a disadvantage that there is a possibility that a motion of an object is not exactly ascertained.